EMI's copy-control technology bites again

By Sam VargheseJuly 17 2003

New technology generally has problems meshing in with legacy hardware. In the case of EMI's copy-control software, the reverse seems to be equally true.

Russell Waters, a technical officer with an electricity company in Melbourne, found out to his chagrin that after he replaced the CD player in his car with a Teac PD-P219C model (with anti skip protection) he could no longer listen to the music discs which EMI sells with copy-control technology on them.

The irony is that the four-year-old player, which he replaced, was able to play the EMI discs. He has now written to EMI, informing the company that if the retailer is unable to replace the CD player with ones that will play EMI CDs or EMI replace the CDs with ones that actually work properly in his new equipment, he will lodge a complaint with the ACCC.

Waters took the usual steps which a consumer does - he wrote to EMI after reading about the problems others had faced. His initial problem back in May was that several music discs he had bought did not always play in computers at work running Windows NT.
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"The new Blur CD simply makes a loud crunching noise when placed in the CD-ROM and won't play at all. I had similar problems with the David Bridie CD for a while.Like the person in the article I am now forced to try copying tracks to MP3s if I want to play them on various computers. It seems strange that you are encouraging people to try to copy CDs in order to listen to them, when you want to get eliminate piracy," he wrote.

EMI's reply was to ask Waters to check whether the disc was readable by the PC in question. "If
so, there is a player application included in the data portion of the CD (specifically "player.exe") that will allow you to listen to the CD itself and not any other player that is currently available to the PC and might cause anomalies if it is played in any other manner.

"If the above does not work, or if the PC cannot read the CD, it would
help
us a lot if we could get the model details of your PC so that we can make
sure that the compatibility issue will be resolved as we continue to
evolve this technology," the impersonal email sent to him said.

But Waters did not have rights beyond that of an ordinary user on the PC at work so beyond pointing this out he could do nothing. "Surely EMI should be checking all these compatibility issues out before the discs are released and they should be clearly marked that they won't play in some CD drives (which this disc isn't, so EMI are selling products which
they know may not work, but are not informing consumers of this fact before
they make the purchase)," he wrote back.

The problem he now faces, with the new CD player in his car, has not drawn a response from EMI - yet. "The TEAC PD-P219C cannot play your discs with the anti-skip protection turned on as almost every track jams at the 9 second mark. This renders the
CD player unusable in the car (the use for which it was purchased). Other
CDs besides your copy protected CDs work perfectly in the unit," he wrote.

"I have written to the retailer via their website for details on how to get a
refund on the player or exchange for a player that actually will play EMI
CD's without problems but their answer was unsatisfactory and ignored the
problem.

"None of the EMI CDs I have purchased in the last 9 months or so have stated
anywhere on them that they will not work in brand new CD players, and the
retailer of the CD player did not state that their product was not fully
compatible with EMI CDs."

Asked about Waters's complaints, an EMI spokesperson responded: "We have been corresponding with Russell Waters and will continue to do so."